


Decking the Halls for Fun and Profit

by MollyC



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Dean being domestic, Don't try this on your friends, Fluff, Humor, I happen to like fruitcake, M/M, Matchmaking, Men of Letters Bunker, Sam has had it with this nonsense, tiny bits of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3141641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyC/pseuds/MollyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fruitcake is nice and the tree's kind of pretty, but Sam has other concerns this Christmas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decking the Halls for Fun and Profit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shotgunpicksthemusic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shotgunpicksthemusic/gifts).



The first hint Sam had that there was something weird going on was his discovery, in late June, that Dean had bought a bottle of brandy.

Not that there was anything remotely unusual about Dean buying booze, but brandy was not his style.  Nor did Dean usually buy high-end anything, which this stuff most assuredly was.  It was almost as if Dean intended to drink it for the flavor.

But Sam ran across the bottle about two hours before they headed out to deal with a cursed music box that drove people insane with music they couldn’t stop hearing, and by the time they dragged their limping selves back to the bunker he’d forgotten about it.

* * *

Thus, in late September, Sam was surprised all over again when he walked into the kitchen one morning in search of breakfast and found Dean up to his elbows—almost literally—in flour and candied fruit.  “What are you doing?” Sam asked, pre-coffee and bewildered.

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Dean responded, genially enough.

“Making...bread?” Sam said.  He shuffled across to the coffee machine, which Dean had finally been persuaded to get when the Men of Letters’ percolator had given up the metaphorical ghost.

“Fruitcake,” Dean said with some relish.

Sam blinked at his hands, trying to make the word register.  “Fruitcake,” he repeated.  It didn’t help.

“Yeah.  You know, figgy pudding, all that jazz?  Fruitcake.  You have to make it like a couple months ahead of time.”

Sam poured into his favorite mug and took a sip of the black coffee before he said, “I, uh, didn’t know you liked fruitcake.”

Dean shot him an incredulous look.  “It’s cake.  With candy and booze in it.  What part of that sounds like I _wouldn’t_ like it?”

* * *

Not long after The Fruitcake, Dean stopped in the library where Sam was taking notes and made an excessively casual comment about Christmas shopping.  Sam put his pen down and turned to face his brother, who was eating a breakfast burrito.  “Dean, I’m going to ask you one question, and you better tell me the truth.”

With a look on his face that suggested he hadn’t expected Sam to snap in quite this way, Dean said, “I pinkie-swear.”

“Are you dying?”

“Am I what?” Dean said, looking honestly puzzled.

Sam tried not to visibly sigh in relief.  “Last time you got all gung-ho about Christmas, you were dying.”

Dean grimaced.  The year of the deal still wasn’t a comfortable topic for either of them.  “No, dude, I just—I dunno.  No one’s dying, no one’s cursed, the world isn’t fricking ending for once.  We have a real place to put stuff.  I figured…”

“You figured we’d, what?  Just give it a shot?”

“Yeah,” said Dean, thrusting his chin out.

Sam studied him.  It wasn’t hard to work out why he was being butch about this; Dean’s life—starting, as so many things did, with Dad—had never exactly rewarded nostalgia, coziness, or sentiment, and Dean's reaction to uncertainty was always to get aggressive.  “OK,” Sam said.  “I’m in.”

* * *

The day after Thanksgiving, which was pretty low-key all things considered, Sam stepped into the great room to see Dean’s back, holding a cell phone to his ear.  “Come on, I know you know this,” Dean was saying.  “Don’t play Vulcan with me, dude.  You don’t have the ears for it.”

Sam didn’t feel it was eavesdropping to not announce his presence right away; if Dean had wanted privacy for this call, he’d have taken it in his room.  But Sam also knew that if he showed up, Dean would change how he spoke to Castiel, and it pretty much had to be Castiel.

Dean paused to listen to Castiel’s reply.  “Yeah, whatever.  We celebrate it in December,” he said.  “So are you gonna show or what?”  Pause.  “Don’t try.  Be here.”  Dean’s voice didn’t crack or anything that obvious, but Sam could hear the longing clear as day—and, he had to hope, Castiel could too.  They were a pair of oblivious idiots but there was only so oblivious a guy who could read minds could be...you’d think, anyway.

“OK,” Dean said.  “OK, good.  You’re gonna try my fruitcake, too.  Yeah, maybe it’ll be good molecules.  OK.  See you then.”  Dean hung up, tossed his phone onto the table beside him, and leaned back in his chair.  Sam faded out of the room and gave it a slow count of thirty before he went back in, making more noise this time.  By the time he rounded the corner again, Dean was sitting the right way at the table, bent over a book.  He glanced up as Sam came in.

“Cas is gonna make it for Christmas,” Dean said, not grinning like an idiot as he clearly wanted to.

“Great,” Sam said mildly, and took a seat himself.  He stared at the book he’d been working on and started to think.

* * *

The third week of December found Sam wondering seriously if he’d given the wrong answer when he told Dean he was OK with doing this Christmas thing.  They hadn’t worked out exactly where the bunker was getting its electricity from, in large part because there had never been a bill, but Sam had to figure that the number of strings of lights Dean had put up was going to make a dent in whatever the source was.

Then there was the holly, which was _everywhere_.  Every doorway in the place, even ones that didn’t lead to the outside, had holly over it, real, natural holly and God only knew where Dean had gotten it.  When Sam protested, Dean grinned and told him it was “good protection, Sammy, you know all the stuff that can’t pass under holly?”  At least the berries seemed to be sticking to their branches.  There was not any mistletoe—yet.  Sam could afford to wait.

He was less upset with the baking.  Dean seemed to have an endless supply of Christmas cookie recipes, and most of them involved cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, or ginger in some combination, with occasional forays into anise and peppermint.  Sam decided he could get used to his living space smelling like cinnamon all the time and wisely did not make any comments about how cute it was that Dean liked to bake.

They had bought a tree, rather against Dean’s protests; he had planned to just go out and find one and cut it down.  Sam had managed to persuade him by pointing out that the tree sellers knew what kinds were good, while they did not, and besides it would leave more energy for decorating.  They’d even gotten a good deal on the thing, since it was vastly too tall for most peoples’ ceilings.  Wrestling it down the stairs had been entertaining but they were both used to handling awkward loads.

And speaking of decorating, Sam wasn’t sure how many Christmas departments Dean had stripped to come up with the collection of ornaments he revealed once the tree was in its stand, wafting its piney scent into the air of the great room.

Sam was a little surprised—and mildly chagrined by his surprise—to realize that Dean had picked a lot of really attractive ornaments.  The only tacky thing was a tree-shaped air freshener, and Sam wasn’t going to argue with that.

Finally, he watched in carefully suppressed amusement as Dean debated over two tree-toppers.  One was a star; the other was an angel.

Somehow, Sam was not surprised when Dean picked the angel.

“Here, Snowmonster, put this up,” Dean said.

The tree was tall enough that Sam had to get a chair to stand on.

* * *

Castiel showed up on the Solstice.  He wandered in from the direction of the garage, toting without evident strain a large bag.  After the obligatory greetings, Sam jerked his chin at it and asked, “What’s in there?”

“Gifts,” Castiel said seriously.  “They’re already wrapped, so there’s no point in looking.”

Sam chuckled.  “Don't worry about me, man,” he said.  “I’ll bet Dean’ll peek, though.”

“I wouldn’t advise him to try,” Castiel said, his eyes narrowing.

Sam had to admit, he was almost more curious about what would happen if Dean tried to pry up a corner of the wrapping paper than about what Castiel thought of as a suitable Christmas present.

“Might as well put ‘em under the tree, it’s in the great room,” he said.  Castiel nodded and headed that way.  He was out of Sam’s sight when Dean exclaimed, “Cas!” and Castiel said, “Hello, Dean.”  Sam rolled his eyes.

* * *

It had taken him a fair amount of surreptitious work to get his site prepared without Dean noticing, but fortunately his brother didn’t spend a lot of time in the archive rooms anymore now that the novelty had worn off.  Sam wouldn’t have bet a lot of money on Dean not _knowing_ that one of them had an attached restroom, but he felt safe in assuming Dean didn’t care.

As a courtesy, Sam waited until after dinner.  He removed himself for an hour or so and then went to Dean’s room to find Dean watching something on his laptop and Castiel sitting in the desk chair, watching Dean.  Dean had managed to get him to take his coat off, something he was still not good at remembering to do on his own; Sam always forgot how much smaller he looked lacking the extra layer.

Dean looked up from his computer with little delay, which was good, and Castiel turned his head.  “Hey, Cas, can I get your help with something?” Sam asked.

“Certainly,” Castiel said.  “What do you need?”  He stood.

“I found a hatch in one of the archive rooms and it’s pretty rusty,” Sam said.  “Instead of rigging up a winch, I was wondering if you could just, um, angel it.”

“A hatch?” Dean said, and paused his movie.  “Where?”

“It’s behind a bookshelf, that’s how we missed it the first time around,” Sam said.  He wanted to feel guilty about the amount of lying he was doing, but he just couldn’t muster the emotion.  It was all in a good cause.

They trooped off to Sam’s prepared archive room and Sam ushered Castiel in and didn’t object when Dean pushed past him protectively.  Then he stepped back into the hallway and, just as Dean was turning around to ask why there was a cot and a couple of chairs in here, Sam swung the door shut.

“Sam, what the hell are you doing?” Dean asked, as Sam dropped the bar into its housing.

“You two need to talk,” Sam told him, and then looked over Dean’s shoulder to catch Castiel’s eye.  “Did I get the sigils right?”

Castiel’s gaze flicked around the doorframe and his eyebrows went up a little.  “It would appear so,” he said.

“It’s not hurting you or anything?  Because I have holy oil.”

“Christo,” Dean barked.

Sam rolled his eyes.  “I’m not possessed.  Or mind-controlled.  Or a shapeshifter.  But I’m also not letting you out until you talk.”  There was a small pause while Dean glanced at Castiel, who studied Sam for a second and then nodded.  Sam didn’t know what it said about their lives that he wasn’t even insulted.

“About what?” Dean demanded.

Sam said, “Look up.”

They both did.  Sam couldn’t see it through the grate in the door, but he _could_ see the exact moment that Dean realized he and Castiel were standing under the mistletoe.  To eliminate ambiguity, Sam had covered a patch of ceiling a yard across with sprigs of the stuff.  “About that,” he said.  “Consider this an early Christmas present.” He'd even left them sandwiches, bottled water and a plate of Dean's cookies.

In the tone he usually used for threatening people with death, Dean said, “Let us out right now or I will shave your head while you sleep, I swear to God.” Castiel looked pained.  Sam shrugged.  He was not a deep sleeper.  “Damnit, Sam, I have to start dinner in the morning.”  Dean’s plans for Christmas dinner apparently required most of two solid days of cooking.

“Better talk fast, then,” Sam said serenely, and turned away from the door.

* * *

Sam peered through the porthole.  Dean was curled on his side and making pained noises.  “The sigil seems to be impairing my healing abilities,” Castiel said.

Sam snorted.  “Nice try, Dean,” he said, and wandered off.

“I told you he wouldn’t believe it,” said Castiel behind him.  

* * *

Sam had prepared himself a spot in another archive room down the hall; he wasn’t going to leave them locked in there with no way out in case of emergency but also didn’t want to be able to hear them talking.

About four o’clock in the morning, however, he discovered that the distance he’d picked didn’t prevent being able to hear them _yelling_.  Dean yelling, at least.

“Like you’d know!  Since you always.  Fucking.   _Leave!_ ”

Castiel’s gravel-voiced reply was louder than usual, though Sam couldn’t quite make out the words.

As Dean’s voice rose again Sam picked up all his papers and fled.

* * *

An hour or so later, when there hadn’t been any shouting for a while, Sam ventured into the archive hallway—and backed out again immediately.  It wasn’t that he’d never heard Dean having sex before; the way they’d grown up had guaranteed some awkward moments.  But he tried assiduously to avoid it.

Sam departed for his room, glowing with satisfaction, to get a few hours' sleep.

* * *

Sam knocked without looking through the grate.  “Dean, time to get up,” he said, and then cursed his phrasing.

“Not a chance,” Dean replied.  “Cas, maybe. I’m pooped.”

“I don’t think that’s what he meant, Dean,” said Castiel, and Dean laughed.

“Please tell me you guys are decent,” Sam said.

“I got clothes on, you can’t ask for decent too.”

“Close enough,” Sam muttered as he bent to unship the bar.

Truth be told, they looked presentable enough, though Castiel’s hair was even wilder than usual and Dean had a glaringly obvious hickey.

Castiel stopped in the doorway, looked thoughtfully at the ceiling, and caught Dean by the arm as he tried to move past.  “We’re under the mistletoe,” he said.  Dean chuckled; Sam turned and headed down the hall for the sake of privacy.

“I’m still gonna shave your head for this,” Dean called after him as he turned the corner.

“Try it,” Sam replied over his shoulder.  “Merry Christmas, Dean.”

“Merry Christmas, Sammy.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Christmas in the bunker. Dean finally has the chance to do Christmas right, showing Cas how a family spends the holidays. Sam has other ideas. He's going get those two idiots together if it kills him. And it just might."
> 
> I'm not sure how well I did with the "if it kills him" part, but I hope you like it.


End file.
